Rob Goodspeed's blog

Accomodating Ridership Growth at Metro Stations

Metrorail’s relatively new Station Access & Capacity Study provided us the raw data to evaluate how well the Washington region jurisdictions were doing cultivating transit oriented development, but now that summer is here I had more time to go back and investigate it in more detail. The study sought to predict ridership growth and station improvements that may be needed. They concluded ridership will growth to 970,000 daily by 2030, or a 42 percent increase from 2005 to 2030.

The report concludes major changes will be needed to smooth transfers at busy stations and respond to growing peak demand. Here are some of the recommendations:

“Based on an order-of-magnitude analysis, the study identified a list of highest-priority capital improvements, including:

Farragut North-Farragut West Tunnel: Construct pedestrian tunnel between two stations.

?Metro Center: Add platform-to-platform vertical capacity, possibly by building the Farragut North-Farragut West pedestrian tunnel. Building this tunnel could reduce Orange or Blue Line transfers to the Red Line.